It was a dark day this past October when Byron Bitz limped back to his hotel from Rogers Arena, the pain in his hip making him feel like he was 70, not 27.

Bitz, a free agent signing by the Canucks last summer, was trying to recover from his fourth surgery in 12 months, but was now just as concerned about his quality of life going forward as he was about ever playing hockey again.

“I remember one day limping out of the rink and back to my hotel and just wondering if this is how I’m going to have to live the rest of my life,” Bitz told The Province from Chicago, where his comeback story this week is trending to a happy ending after playing his first three games with the AHL Wolves.

“Am I going to be limping around and in chronic pain all the time? It wasn’t like I was for-getting about hockey, but that was at the point in the process where we really didn’t know what was going on.”

The Canucks took a bit of a flyer on the 6-foot-5, 215-pound winger, who’d missed the entire 2010-11 season with three separate surgeries, when they signed him to the two-way contract ($700,000/$105,000).

Having a history of groin issues, he suffered a sports hernia in training camp with Florida and had it surgically repaired in October 2010. Complications arose and he had surgery on what was discovered to be a groin tear in January. Following that, Bitz was still having problems and it was then found he also had a torn hip labrum – for which he had surgery in March.

Bitz felt good in offseason training, but in September before Canucks training camp he began to have more abdominal issues. It was determined the previous season’s sports hernia needed repair, but after that surgery there were more issues and off he went down the rabbit hole again.

“It’s really a credit to the doctors and the training staff of the Canucks,” said Bitz, before the Wolves downed Rockford 4-2 on Wednesday. “They did ultrasounds and CT scans just to make sure. It was a slow pro-cess of elimination to find out what they needed to do. It was more rehab-type things.”

Bitz also had a series of PRP (protein rich plasma) injections into his groin area to pro-mote healing and regeneration. It involves taking the patient’s blood and spinning it in a centrifuge to separate the plasma and then injecting it.

“It’s been working and I’m on the right track here,” said Bitz.

After getting back on skates in December, he practised for three weeks in Chicago before clearing waivers from Vancouver and getting into his first games on the weekend since March 27, 2010.

It went about as well as Bitz could have hoped. He scored the winning goal in Friday’s 5-2 win at Peoria and had an assist in Sunday’s 5-2 win over visiting Charlotte.

“I feel really good, actually,” said Bitz, a Saskatoon native, who played a season with Nanaimo of the BCHL before heading to play at Cornell for four years. “I was pleasantly surprised how I felt. It’s pushing two years. It was exciting. I was a little nervous before. It almost felt like my first game in college or pro.”

Bitz said he has no time frame to get back to where he was 21 months ago.

“I’m not really sure how long it’ll take,” he said. “I feel pretty good right now, but when I think back to December, when I started skating, I feel way better. I’m hoping in a month from now I can feel a lot better. I’ll take it a week at a time.”

Clearly, the Canucks could use a player of Bitz’s size and physical nature. He’s confident he can do the job if he gets the chance.

“I’ve played enough games in [the NHL] and played a few games in the playoffs,” said Bitz, who played parts of two seasons with Boston before being traded to Florida.

“I know what I need to do to be successful if I do get a chance to help the team. It’s being physical and strong on the puck and grinding it out in their end.”

Considering that bottom-six wingers Andrew Ebbett, Aaron Volpatti and Steve Pinizzotto are all out of the mix with long-term injuries, Bitz could see an opportunity sooner than later if his health holds up. But he’s not obsessing about it.

“I kind of look at things differently now,” he said. “When Mike Duco got called up the other day I was the happiest guy for him. I really have a new perspective on the game. Just to play again is a huge break. I didn’t think I’d play again. You don’t really appreciate what you have until you lose it and you’re looking at the possibility of never getting it back.”

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